By Your Leave, Sir

Hitching a ride in a stolen U.S. government Secret Service car, just minutes before police lights appeared in the rear-view mirror, put 17-year-old Jack H. Barnes in a spot that volunteering for the U.S. Navy seemed like a good idea. Once it got to know him, the Navy wasn't so sure it agreed. In the summer of 1945, he found himself on the unfinished, under-supplied USS Pine Island, en route to Tokyo Harbor.

In By Your Leave, Sir, Barnes tells the story of how he got himself into hot water, out into the middle of the ocean, into more hot water, and onto a Japanese seaplane. It's the Pacific during World War II as you've never seen it before.